Neville Goddard Lectures: “Forgiveness and the Immortal Eyes”

15 Mar Neville Goddard Lectures: “Forgiveness and the Immortal Eyes”

4/18/69

Tonight we’ll take two aspects of the great mystery: one is forgiveness and the other is the immortal eyes, the eyes that really see.

He said to them, “When one or two are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them also. Then Peter said to him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’ He said, ‘Seventy times seven’” (Mat.18:21). This is something you and I must practice and practice daily, but how many know the art of forgiveness? Repentance and faith are conditions of forgiveness. But really, forgiveness, if you look at it, there is no worldly wisdom in it, we all know that. Then what are people Christians for? The story itself makes no sense…the story of Christianity and its doctrines, none whatsoever. Well then, what are we Christians for? When you read the promises made in scripture that the dead shall rise into an entirely different world, clothed differently, it doesn’t make sense when you see it all turn before you into ash as the body is cremated. Yet man is called upon to believe the story of redemption.

So here is the only way a man can forgive: learn to distinguish the eternal human that walks about and among these stones of fire, in bliss and woe alternate, from those states or worlds in which the Spirit travels. This is the only means to forgiveness. I must learn to distinguish between the state and the occupant of the state. If I can see the most horrible acts in the world knowing that that is an actor and the script is written for him. If he is cast in that role he has to play that part. If there’s any condemnation it must be to the author who wrote the part and not the actor who is playing the part. So here, if I can distinguish between states and the occupants of states, then I can forgive

Now, how do I forgive? By identifying the one that I would forgive with the ideal that he has failed to realize. The highest ideal would be to identify him with the divine image itself. When we are told, “Let us make man in our image,” well now, that image is the image of God. It’s called in scripture Christ. To take a man unknown in the world that is condemned by the world, and still identify him with the image that is Christ that radiates and reflects God…that doesn’t make sense. Yet I am called upon to do it. I must actually identify him in my own mind’s eye with that divine image. But I could fall a little short of that and take an ideal that he has failed to realize. The ideal, well, in his own world of Caesar it could be that he is affluent or at least he has an income equal to his responsibilities, even though he has nothing, and identify him with that. Until I am strong enough to go beyond the barriers of appearances and see him as really the divine image itself. Well, I am called upon to set this in motion and to practice it, and not only practice it but to talk about it and tell it.

So when the statement is made “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” In the Mishnah, which is a Hebraic work interpreting scripture, it is said that if two sit together and there is no word of the Torah between them, they are seated in the seat of the scoffers. As it is written in the 1st Psalm, “Blessed is the man who sits not in the seat of the scoffers, but rejoices in the law of God day and night. For that man shall prosper in all that he does” (1:1). So they associate this with the 1st Psalm…if a man who does not discuss the Torah, the law of God and his prophecies, though he is known and a brilliant mind, he is actually seated in the seat of the scoffers. Now we are told in the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, we read it in the 3rd chapter, “If two fear the Lord”—and the word fear means “to reverence, to respect”—“if two respect and reverence the Lord, they will discuss his word and they will talk together.” Those who talk together discussing the word then the Shekinah which means “the Glory of God” is between them.